Inside the Dallas Cowboys Treasury Playbook with Erica Proctor

Joseph Drambarean
Welcome to Fintech Corner, I’m Joseph Drambarean and we’re joined by Erica Proctor from the Dallas Cowboys. I’m so excited about this conversation. We’re here on the floor of AFP. This is 2025.

Erica Proctor
God, is it really? I can’t believe it.

We’ve been doing this for three years now.

Erica Proctor
Oh, wow.

Joseph Drambarean
It’s been so fun every year to hear stories from our customers. And honestly, I can’t help myself. I have to bring up the Dallas Cowboys.

Erica Proctor
I mean, most people can’t.

Joseph Drambarean
Instead of doing it and talking about DAC and MVP season, whatever, how about we talk about what’s been the most surprising thing about working at the Dallas Cowboys? Doesn’t even have to be related to the team itself.

Erica Proctor
Well, so it’s really funny because I am not a sports person and I’m sure my boss is gonna like hate every minute of that, but I didn’t grow up in a really big sports family. So when I was telling all of my friends and family that I’m going to work for the Dallas Cowboys, 90 % of them were like, what? You don’t even like sports. I’m like, well, it’s my life now. So I’m gonna learn to like it. I’ve learned a lot. There’s still a lot that I don’t have any idea about at all.

Yeah, so I look like the idiot when other people start talking sports and I’m like, yeah I know which wide receiver that’s his that’s his play position right wide receiver. Yeah, that’s But they’re very very family oriented and Great work-life balance and that just wasn’t something I really expected and it works well for me because it’s what I was looking for in My life and the life that I’m trying to build for myself outside of work. So it has been wonderful. The people that I work with are fabulous and we really do feel like a family. And everybody’s always cheering everybody on for one thing or another and it’s great.

Joseph Drambarean
That is amazing. Well, even though they might say that you don’t know all the different play calls in the Dallas Cowboys offense, when it comes to money, you may know a thing or two about the operations. How do you drive kind of the evangelism of what treasury is at all within the organization? And what does that look like for you? It sounds like you run. Are you the only treasurer?

Erica Proctor
So I am the senior Treasury manager and for all intents and purposes I am a department of one Anything that needs a second approval tends to go to either the CFO or the VP of accounting For when I’m doing wires and transfers, but everything else Treasury for the most part runs through me My CFO is very hands-on and still does the majority of the forecasting I’m trying to see if he’ll trust me with it eventually But yeah, it’s it’s fun

Joseph Drambarean
As a lean operation, it kind of almost begs the question, can it even be done by one person without tech? And what has been that journey like for you, especially having to juggle so many things within your operation?

Erica Proctor
So I think I have to credit my previous position a lot. do have a very high work ethic and I hold myself to extremely high standards, probably more so than a lot of people do, which just causes me more stress. But my previous position, I worked for a family office and I managed by myself for the most part, over 400 bank and brokerage accounts on a daily basis. it was intense, right? I come to the Cowboys and while the volume is lower, the dollar amounts tend to be more significant. So dollar-wise, I’m moving more money, but volume is lower. And so instead of having 400 bank and brokerage accounts, I have roughly 80. So it’s different. And so for me, I’m like, this is easy compared to where I came from. What do I do with my spare time?

I don’t know. Maybe a little forecasting, right? Yeah, I do try to find efficiencies where I can. But my main goal when I step into a role is to learn it the ins and outs and how every aspect of what I am doing affects the other departments, because I don’t want to make any changes until I fully understand how it’s going to affect everybody else so that I can mitigate some of that risk and concern and change so that it becomes smoother.

Joseph Drambarean
How does it work with the other departments? It’s actually really interesting from the general treasury practice because teams are, like you said, smaller operations but very large transactions, and in some cases international, not always, but in some cases. What does collaboration with other departments look like in your environment? Are there any challenges?

Erica Proctor
Challenges are, I feel like comes with every job right? Yeah, but we’re very team oriented ironically Cowboys right? We’re very team oriented My accounting department or what they loop as the accounting department is a culmination of several other departments in many other companies So it’s Treasury its payroll its tax its procurement its accounting its AP its AR. It’s all of this and so we all work very closely together and getting it done day by day and taking care of it. And so a lot of what I do, I try to find ways that my job can make things more efficient for them. If it takes you 15 minutes to do this process, but I’m in the system every day and it would just take me two to three more seconds to do that for you, let me save you the time. Add just a little bit of time to me so that you can open up your wheelhouse to do more productive things for you.

Joseph Drambarean
It kind of sounds like you’re almost in a dare I say it almost a tech leadership position just having implemented you know software that makes you more efficient does that ever put you in a position where you’re advising other parts of the organization on how to kind of streamline things and not yet

Erica Proctor
Not yet, it hasn’t. I feel like our IT department really holds that role, but I have been able to implement some functionality that makes my job easier and in turn makes other people’s jobs easier. So that’s been nice.

Joseph Drambarean
Obviously a theme at the trade show floor, know, automation, AI, everybody’s talking about the same things. How have you felt kind of engaging with some of these topics as you walk around the showroom floor, what is kind of your most important next agenda item? Kind of looking forward over the next year or two years, what are you trying to accomplish and how does tech play a role in all of that?

Erica Proctor
So the biggest thing that we’ve been trying to accomplish is getting rid of checks, right? Everybody loves to hate paper, unless you’re the older generation and then they love paper.

Joseph Drambarean
I didn’t want to say it, but you said it.

Erica Proctor
To be fair there are times where even I am like I need to write this down. I need some paper I’ve got to hold it. It just sometimes sinks in my brain a little bit better. So I get it but getting rid of checks and getting rid of fraud and that fraud potential is Massive because the sheer amount of time that I alone spend mitigating fraud and Dealing with fraud claims and having to close and open new bank accounts and get those set up and all the services associated with them, it’s draining.

Joseph Drambarean
What’s the reason for all that? it just the nature of the sports industry and this kind of?

Erica Proctor
I think it’s just the nature of criminals. Now, because we are the Cowboys, that star means big bucks to a lot of people. So we’re actually doing things on our side to remove that noticeable emblem so that it happens less.

Joseph Drambarean
It all sounds so manual and tedious. And I’m curious for those that are on the showroom floor that aren’t in the same position as you, know, having implemented software, gaining leverage and automation, all of that. What advice do you give them if they’re still, you know, in spreadsheets all day downloading, you know, data from their bank, doing things by hand? What advice would you give them?

Erica Proctor
So as much as we all love Excel but also want to get away from it, I don’t feel like we’re ever going to be able to. But taking the time to do your research, learning your function in and out, where you can pretty much do it in your sleep, that first of all is going to help you figure out where you have the most opportunity to gain in efficiencies. And then when you’re looking at different processes and systems to help you with that. The thing that I’ve done the most is ask for a proof of concept because everybody wants to tell you, we can fix this for you, we can do this for you. That’s great. I want you to prove it. Yeah. Like take some of my data and show me that you can do what I need your system to do.

Joseph Drambarean
That’s actually a very tech oriented approach. in tech companies, POCs drive everything to get the proof that you need to make a business case for any.

Erica Proctor
And I will say anybody who’s like, well, we don’t do that. Well, it’s been nice speaking with you Yeah, thanks for your time that we’re done here If you’re not willing to give me a proof of concept that tells me that you’re not standing behind your product The way that I feel you should right and if you’re not standing behind your product, how can I stand behind your product? How that doesn’t make me want to use it every day. Absolutely so I would say proof of concept and making sure that you’ve got the time and when you’re a lean team like like I am – that can be very scarce. So it might take me longer to implement a system because I’m the only one doing it and I don’t have all the additional resources but I know that it’s done the way that I want it to be done and it takes however long I want it to take right and if I want it to go faster then I dedicate more time to it so just being willing to Take the time needed and really devote as much time as you can to it so that it’s done correctly and you don’t rush it, like that’s huge.

Joseph Drambarean
Right. And it’s taking that little step of risk to do POC, even though it might be throwaway, that gives you that leverage kind of ultimately. kind of thinking about prototypes and where things are going, let’s pretend that, you know, we’re in a time machine, we go to AFP 10 years from now. And we’re sitting here talking about the Dallas Cowboys again.

Erica Proctor
I mean, I hope as far as my boss is concerned, I’m gonna be there.

Joseph Drambarean
What do the future us, you know, when we’re sitting here talking about the conversation, what does that world look like from a treasury perspective, from your perspective?

Erica Proctor
So you know, it’s interesting because I’ve thought about it because looking back, I’ve been involved in treasury for, God, I’m gonna age myself about 13 years now. And it’s a world that I didn’t even know existed until I got into it. And I fell in love with it like most people who fall into this world. And I, in many ways, still rely on a lot of the products, especially Excel, like I did before. Even though I’ve made all these advances in technology efficiencies, there are still some pieces that the old stuff just works. Yeah. And you can rely on it. So I don’t know that spreadsheets are ever going to fully go away. And part of me as an accounting minor and a math nerd kind of loves that. Right. But I’m interested to see where AI takes it and how AI tries to handle other things like payments. Because that’s where for me, like the payment functionality hasn’t changed much. Yeah, you have different types of payment companies now, but you’re still dealing with ACHs. You’re still dealing with checks. You’re still dealing with wires. We have the real-time payments on hand now. And that’s probably the newest thing, which I’m about to start exploring. But I don’t see like the payment functionality changing all that much.

Joseph Drambarean
It’ll be interesting because I mean, if you were to listen to all of the different boots here, what are the topics? It’s stable coins are going to disintermediate all transactions and make payments 24 seven and international AI is going to introduce agentic systems where you could imagine an agent buddy that is working with you 24 seven doing your bidding, anything that you ask that system to do, it’ll go and do it for you.

Erica Proctor
I know, I trust issues with that still. feel like a lot of people like, ugh.

Joseph Drambarean
And it’s hard to, you know, when we’re in the moment now and we’re seeing all of these technologies develop before our eyes, it’s hard to trust it. But that’s why I always have fun when I think about things and future cast like 10 years from now, 15 years from now. And I assume take, for example, an analogy. When the iPhone or, you know, smartphones first came out, they kind of didn’t do anything, right? Enterprise email didn’t work. You couldn’t really do much of anything, but when you compare that to your smartphone. I saw that you’re using a fold. Did you ever believe that it would be possible to have a phone that folds in half and able to do all the things that it does? it’s almost like you can’t even imagine that in the moment when it’s first coming out. And that’s why I always have fun with this conversation because it gets you to think critically. What would you look like if it were true? Take for example, if you could trust an AI agent, like really trust it, like Jarvis, you know, in Iron Man, what would your life look like as a treasurer?

Erica Proctor
It would be vastly different. I feel like I would have a lot more free time. If I could just speak hey, I need this wire to go out right like and it do all the things like that’s like Feel like Samantha from Bewitched. I just say it and it happens. Yeah, right aging myself yet again old references.

Joseph Drambarean (15:29)
And then, I did the nose thing in my head.

Erica Proctor (15:32)
Well yeah, because we’re not, you know, have to like, we’re like her daughter, I can’t remember her name. Anyway, I would have a lot more free time. I’d be interested to see how it would affect other aspects, like the card management. I’m in charge of our card program and the administrator and that system seems so antiquated sometimes. The way that we have to do it and the reporting functionality out of that. So being able to apply AI to that process, I think that’s where it would really have a huge impact.

Joseph Drambarean
Do you feel like if you knew that you could get that level of autonomy and all you have to do to get there would be plug all the right data pipes together and be really aggressive about it? Do you feel like you’d be more motivated to do that if you knew that that future was coming without a shadow of a doubt?

Erica Proctor
In some aspects, yes, but I really like to see that it’s been proven and all the kinks have been worked out with other people before we put our information into it.

Joseph Drambarean
Before you let an agent just send a multi-million dollar wire, check to make sure that it was to the right person.

Erica Proctor
And I would be like, okay, let me be the approver. Yeah, let AI enter it all but then I still want to review it Yeah before we pull that trigger. Absolutely. And how do you I don’t feel like you can write that into AI like the dual approvals Yeah, right because that requires a human being to look at it. Even now I’m a human being most of the time like to function like I’m a robot, that doesn’t always happen, but I can make a mistake and my approver, who is also another human being, in his review, he could make the exact same mistake that I can. But you still need that oversight. How do you get that oversight with AI? It’s tricky.

Joseph Drambarean
Yeah, because on the one hand, it has that automation that everybody’s excited about, especially when you think about it from the vantage point of just question answering, which is a lot of our context right now. It’s I type in something that I want, it spits out an answer. It could be verbose or not. But a lot of the systems that are being developed today that are the most exciting, you don’t even prompt anything.

Erica Proctor
It’s happening under the hood. I can’t fathom that. It’s tough It’s reading my mind. I already get freaked out when I mention that I’m thinking about getting a toaster and then I have all these targeted ads on my phone now. I’m like, stop listening. I can’t. I’m not ready for that.

Joseph Drambarean
That’s what’s interesting about it is what if it, you know, it never sleeps, right? So it has access to all of the banking data has access to anything you’re doing throughout the day. Imagine if all of those pipes were plugged in as we were just talking about and they’re all working and it’s just sitting there crawling it all day thinking, what is the risk of this particular thing? Is this fraud? Should I set this up as a payment for approval so that Erica can look at it in the morning as soon as she wakes up and opens her flip phone. That’s kind of what is being worked on today. And I think that that’s what’s it puts us in a position of having to either adapt or I don’t know what the alternative is, you know, to give you an example in tech. If we don’t adopt it, we know that someone else will. Yeah. And it’s like almost this pressure of if you don’t come up with the strategies to do it safely, to do it accurately, to still have the level of productivity that you have today that will you lose to someone that is know native in it.

Erica Proctor
I mean, almost indefinitely.

Joseph Drambarean
Exactly. So that’s why it’s always so interesting to think through it. You know, have a plan almost.

Erica Proctor
Even in this conversation right now, like when I thought about that question before, I didn’t go that in depth. And now I’m like, now you’ve got me second guessing everything that I was thinking.

Joseph Drambarean
It’s always a thought exercise. It is. know, because at the end of the day, everybody is going to adopt it with different levels of, you know, integration, right?

Whether it’s for payments, which is, think, like the most absolute bleeding edge to analysis. Just, hey, find this thing for me because I don’t want to look for it because that’s a waste of my time. I think that there’s like a in-between section somewhere in there. Then, two years from now, AI will take over and we will all be there.

Erica Proctor
I would agree.

I don’t know. There’s just going to be some jobs that AI is never going to be able to do. And of course, maybe I’m being a little partial here, but I feel like my job is one of those jobs. Absolutely.

Joseph Drambarean
It’s your intuition ultimately that decides whether or not you want to take a level of risk or not. It’s not always going to come down to a calculus. It makes me wonder, not to call out the ownership group of the Dallas Cowboys, but I feel like when you think of one owner versus another owner versus another owner, they all may have different risk profiles that cannot be calculated by one model, which is why you ultimately still need a human, person that is evaluating all of that and deciding, well, given my relationship with, you know, the ownership group and our policies and all of that, we are willing to do this.

Erica Proctor
Yeah. And you’re right. Those are factors that I don’t feel like could ever be built into an AI. Yeah. Right now. And with my limited knowledge and experience with it, whereas somebody else might be like, give us give us five years. We’ll be there. And I’m like, OK, good for you. I it’s my that’s my age. That’s my leeryness about technology sometimes.

Joseph Drambarean
To land the plane on this discussion, because I feel like we could go on about tech and AI for hours. knowing that there are so many folks kind of here looking for advice, trying to get to a best practice, what kind of final word of advice would you give to anyone watching this podcast?

Erica Proctor
Research the heck out of it.

It’s I have looked at so many different services and products and systems and everybody is always going to put their best foot forward, right? Right. But I have found that proof of concept that we mentioned earlier has worked for me nine times out of 10. And it is either given me a yes, definitively, this is where I want to go or this did not work at all like I thought it was going to. Yeah. The great thing about that proof of concept is

The only thing it costs you is your time. Absolutely. So as long as you’re willing to put in the time to do the work and make sure you’re choosing the best product for you or service for you or even the best people do the research. Yeah. You’re gonna come out on top when you take the time to invest in it.

Joseph Drambarean
I love that.

And honestly, it’s great advice for anyone that’s here on the trade room show floor. Erica, thank you so much for stopping by Fintech Corner. This has been an awesome conversation and until next time, hopefully next year.

Erica Proctor
Hopefully. We’ll see you around. Thanks.